


the river says your name

by spookykingdomstarlight



Category: Original Work
Genre: Bittersweet, Body Modification, Intimacy, Kissing, Lies, Other, Robot/Human Relationships, Spies & Secret Agents
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-17
Updated: 2019-06-17
Packaged: 2020-05-07 12:03:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,388
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19209037
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spookykingdomstarlight/pseuds/spookykingdomstarlight
Summary: They can’t look Eikeé in the eye right now. Everything will show if they do.





	the river says your name

**Author's Note:**

  * For [venndaai](https://archiveofourown.org/users/venndaai/gifts).



> Title slightly modified from “When the Night is Over” by Lord Huron

Rel has a decision to make. On a galactic timescale, it’s not even a blip, this decision, won’t be documented in any geologic record, will fall off the cliff of recorded history into an abyss of nothingness. In the future, they won’t be a traitor. They won’t be anything. There is beauty in that, relief, a reason to keep going.

If they’re remembered at all—and they won’t be, that’s the whole point of their job—they will be remembered as a hero. But only if they send this databurst, the final piece they’ve needed to secure victory for their people.

There’s no physical component to it beyond the wetware in the head which houses it, a concession to the needs of this mission, which are: a humanoid body and the biological components to make them seem more cyborg than complete AI. One is distrusted by many, or pitied. The other is an enemy to be feared and hated. And yet humans haven’t figured out it’s possible for one to pass as the other: an oversight that has finally been exploited. With and by Rel. They’ve waited a long time for this chance, all of them, Rel most of all.

The adjustment has been strange, but they’ve grown fond of the fine-motor control of their fingers, the smoothness of their skin, the thoughts that twist and twine sluggishly through their mind, surprising and strange all at once, no doubt influenced by the messy neural connections inside their brain, the very human brain that’s been grown for just this purpose.

They like the way their touch draws shuddering gasps from their partner, also messy, also driven by the pleasant biological feedback this body offers.

By rights, Rel should consider Eikeé a mistake. Rel has certainly made a mistake or two letting this go as far as it has. But they can’t deny they want this, the one thing that’s always been missing in their long, lonely life.

Eikeé tugs at their hair with strong, steady hands, and mutters unhappily that Rel’s wasting too much time pressing kisses into eir ribs when ey could be the one doing the kissing instead.

“Come on, Rel,” ey says. Eir muscles jump beneath Rel’s hands. “You’re being selfish.”

That’s a truer statement than ey knows and ey will realize it soon than Rel likes. They close their eyes and draws in a deep, rasping breath, shoving the thought aside, finding themself annoyed when it doesn’t stay where it’s been shoved.

They will never get used to any of this, the foibles and flaws of humanity, the inconveniences and euphorias, hadn’t known what they were stepping into when they walked up to Eikeé and introduced themself as the new hire. Eikeé had taken one look at the wires and tubes that curl about their neck and jaw, little LEDs blinking along the length to occasionally suggest the possibility of misfortune in their past—nonexistent, of course, but they created memories anyway, for verisimilitude, because they can’t tell the truth, can’t say that they need them to process human inputs at all—and said, “Oh, cool. I’ve been waiting for another scriptjock. Sweet mods, by the way. Do you ever change the color of the lights?”

Eir eyes still linger on their neck when ey thinks they aren’t paying attention, trace distractedly over their unnaturally-ridged clavicle when they are lying together in bed. Sometimes, Rel lets em reprogram the lights just because, sits for hours enjoying the strange flickerings while ey pokes and prods at them, so close and so far from the truth. Rel is always, always paying attention. Constantly. They never miss anything Eikeé does. That might be the tragedy in their programming: they can plead no true ignorance.

Rel’s only saving grace, if there is any grace to be had, though every human theology they’ve studied suggests there is no grace allotted to synthetics, is that they never had to use Eikeé to get the intelligence they’d needed.

Eikeé has never been the mark, nowhere near. There has been no advantage to Rel in knowing em beyond the personal.

Not that Eikeé will care about that distinction once ey knows what Rel truly is. In fact, being an accessory at best might just hurt em more. Rel isn’t looking forward to finding out. But they’re so close to their goal now that nothing should stop them. On a long enough timeline—humans are so short-lived compared to their people—Eikeé won’t matter anymore. Rel can give immortality to Eikeé’s memory and nothing more. Not that ey will consider the trade a good or worthy one. Rel might not, in eir shoes.

When they think about the way the universe will be once this is done, they don’t see the shining, gleaming worlds they’ve always been told will form the new order. Perfectly balanced planets kept pristine for successive generations of people, all people to enjoy. Not just humans, but every species. They’d believed in that cause once.

They want to believe in it again.

“You’re doing that thing,” Eikeé grumbles, finally succeeding in pulling Rel up, though instead of doing what Eikeé wants, Rel applies themselves to the delicately corded muscles of eir neck. They can’t look Eikeé in the eye right now. Everything will show if they do. It won’t matter what Rel wants or needs to do, because Eikeé will know. That knowledge is intoxicating and terrifying in turns. Eikeé could undo everything. Eir fingers curl around the base of their neck, nails scraping at the contours of their vertebrae. The sensation is somewhat akin to the completion of a subroutine, satisfying in a way that Rel couldn’t describe even if they wanted to. A human might call it ‘good,’ at the very least, but that doesn’t feel accurate. Rel had always put off trying to understand it all, but now that time is running out, they wish they’d spent more time analyzing it, learning all of its particulars.

They wasted so much time. They continue to waste it. They don’t know how to do anything else but stall.

“What thing?” Rel asks, throat closing around the words. They hate this. So much. They never should have gotten involved, maybe never even should have been allowed to take this particular mission. There are plenty of people who could have. Rel wonders now why it was given to them. Surely this flaw in their programming was known to somebody. But no. It was given to them, who apparently had a soft-spot for humans who look at them the way Eikeé does.

Ey hums as Rel nips at eir throat, scrapes teeth across their favorite stretch of tendon, sucks marks into the lightly muscled juncture between neck and shoulder. They soak up the way Eikeé shudders through the sensations ey feel, commit each sound, taste, texture, to memory. Even eir heat signature gets backed up, the smooth blotches of red and orange and purple, every color in the spectrum, something to remember em by. Something so that Rel will remember the cost of what they will have done.

No, what they’ve yet to do: if Rel wants to, they could pretend, for just a little while longer, that everything is just the way it’s always been. They haven’t reached their goal. This hellish mission isn’t that close to completion.

“You’re thinking too hard.”

Rel hasn’t thought enough, that’s the problem, but they can’t exactly say it. That kind of mysterious response would grab hold in Eikeé’s imagination, get tugged around by the scruff of its neck as Eikeé worried at it. They could probably undo this all right now with the right handful of words. Eikeé would figure it all out.

If they say something in just the right tone, it could all unravel.

They wish it would.

But the revolution is coming one way or the other. Their people could send another Rel if they want to. This doesn’t have to be their job.

And yet it is.

And at the end of the day, whatever else they’ve done, it will remain their job.

This might be the last time Eikeé won’t hate them.

Rel finally brings themself to look em in the eye.

They think maybe it will be worth it.

They think maybe they won’t go through with it.


End file.
